History - People - Brice Bosnich

Brice Bosnich Tenure: Lecturer 1967-1968

Brice Bosnich, known universally as "Boz", came to UCL from Australia. He was an undergraduate at Sydney and did his PhD at ANU in Canberra with Alan Sargeson. During his period here, he worked principally on problems in inorganic stereochemistry using techniques like circular dichroism.

He left UCL in 1968 to take up a position at the University of Toronto where, with a small group, he carried out many elegant investigations of catalysis using transition metal complexes. Most famously he developed the chiral chelating ligand CHIRAPHOS. In 1987 he moved to the University of Chicago, effectively succeeding his old friend and sparring partner Prof Jack Halpern, working on molecular recognition and supramolecular chemistry as well as on oxygen transport. He remained in the Windy City until his retirement, and then moved back to Australia.

Boz was a superb but formidable lecturer to undergraduates. Unconventional in his thinking and in his attitudes, Boz knew how to get a rise out of people - this won him both friends and enemies. Conservative in outlook, he has gone on the record as rejecting the possibility of anthropogenic climate change.

Prof Bosnich was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2000.

Boz is also a fan of both Country and Western music.

This page last modified 28 September, 2010